The Magic of 20.109

Mod1 was an interesting time.  On the one hand, this felt like the first time any of my classes did science that I thought actually related to what I wanted to do.  Cancer is a very exciting topic that has concrete applications in the real world.  I could finally see how everything that I had been learning for the past few years was going to help in the real world.  I felt like I was an actual MIT student working with experimental assays and learning about real science.

But on the other hand, there were times that I had no idea what I was doing.  I understood most of the experiments well enough, having done something similar in my UROP, but because we were limited by time, Leslie/Maxine did a lot behind the scenes.  I really appreciated them finishing up experiments when we ran out of time, but this made it feel a bit like magic when our experiments suddenly had concrete results within the next couple of days.

Because of the “magic”, sometimes we had to take a bit of a leap of faith and hope that everything would turn out all right in the end.  But, for the most part, everything did turn out all right.  Leslie and Maxine were always super helpful whenever we had any questions about the experiments.  Professor Engelward’s lectures also tied in well with our experiments and helped explain a lot.  Everything was always made clear in the end, even if it seemed a bit like magic at first.  By the end of Mod1, I learned that science is a lot like magic, and you sometimes have to take a leap of faith.  You just have to trust that people before you have understood what will/should happen and that they can help you understand and see the magic.